Monday, July 23, 2012

Well, another lovely read-a-thon has reached its end. *sniff* It has been great fun hosting once again. I hope everyone was able to accomplish the goals they set and even if you didn't, I hope you enjoyed it above all else. I would like to thank you for joining me again and I hope you will join me for the FrightFallRead-a-Thon October 1 through 7.

I've also decided to host a Write-a-Thon for writing our novels, stories, reviews, articles...whatever you need to get written. I'm thinking August or September. I have a poll up at The True Book Addict to help me decide when so I would appreciate a vote if you're interested in participating. Thanks!

I would like to extend a special thanks to Nova and Laura for hosting mini-challenges at their blogs. You guys are awesome! Also, an extra special thanks to the authors, publicists, and publishers who donated our terrific prizes.

Speaking of prizes...please have your wrap-up posts added to the linky below no later than 10am CST on Tuesday (U.S. time). I will start choosing winners and continue choosing until all prizes are awarded. Good luck!

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Welcome to the starting line! Be sure to sign in here, at the beginning or when you start reading. Remember, you do not have to have a blog to join us. You can sign in linking to Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads...wherever you will be updating from. And you don't have to start at the beginning. Start on any day this week, or if you're working all week, join us for the weekend. People can sign in up until Friday night at 11:59pm CST. I'll be stopping by and visiting you so I hope you will have your book piles/reading lists posted. *hint hint* Join us on Twitter using the hashtag #HSreadathon We are going to have three Twitter chats this week. I know that the majority voted for two, but I want to have one on Sunday mid-day so that International people can join us. Here's the Twitter chat schedule:Wednesday from 4 to 5pm CSTFriday from 8 to 9pm CSTSunday from 12 to 1pm CSTAt other odd times on Twitter, we might even have some reading sprints throughout the week. There won't be any prizes if/when we do, but you will get bragging rights. Just remember to have fun this week. Again, my read-a-thon credo is "a week of relaxed reading during which we can personally challenge ourselves and whittle away those ever looming TBR piles/shelves/libraries." I have done away with mini-challenges so we can focus more on the reading, but please do stop by and visit your fellow read-a-thon-ers if you get a chance...and again, we will also be on Twitter for social interaction. =O)PRIZES/GIVEAWAYS

I will have the prize and giveaway page posted during the day on Monday so come back here to find it. I will also have easy access links at the top of the blog. There are going to be couple of easy mini-challenges with prizes hosted by two of our participants. I will indicate next to the person if the challenge is live or not.

Monday, July 16, 2012

This is the prize promotion page for all the prizes being given away for the read-a-thon. At the end of this post, you will find details regarding how the prizes will be awarded at the end of the read-a-thon.

ec·o·nom·ics: a simple twist on normalcy(one eBook--International)Professional football players, corporate tobacco advertisers, volatile gasoline prices, and the Cold War all share an undetected commonality—each is an intrinsic part of economics. Though not obvious to the naked eye, each entity shares a pattern with the others. This book helps to shed light on these mutual characteristics. It is an extensive compilation of theories interpreted using supportive examples.A person with a professional degree graduates from high school at age eighteen. At an average of eight years to fully earn their education, the age they start a professional position is twenty-six. They must also factor in the debt of $150,000 that will have to be paid back for their education. If the person works the same number of hours per year and retires at the same age as a person with less than a high school diploma, the average lifetime earnings of a person with a professional degree is $3,115,080 after educational debt repayment. This is a 287 percent lifetime increase for an eight-year average investment in human capital. If that isn’t a worthwhile payout, I don’t know what is!Economics is an enthralling science that encompasses our actions, thoughts, and emotional rationality every day in the unconscious. This book dissects economic theory into bite-size, entertaining snippets that anyone can understand and apply to their daily routines. It is a compelling depiction of history, business, pop culture, and social movements intertwined with relevant economic trends. Economics is part of daily life, and this book challenges readers to question how and why people make decisions by adding a simple twist on normalcy.

About the author:

Kersten L. Kelly is a self-published author of narrative non-fiction and semi-fiction books. She grew up in Munster, Indiana, and currently works in a sales role based out of Chicago, Illinois. She started writing at an early age and graduated from Indiana University with a dual Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Communication & Culture. She then went on to earn a Master’s in Business Administration from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. She has a passion for learning, teaching, and writing as well as international travel in her spare time. This book is her first piece of published work.

A Lovely, Indecent Departure(One print copy--International)Winner--AleksandraParents are charged with teaching their children right from wrong, but above all else is caring for their general welfare and when Italian immigrant Anna Miller loses her fiver-year old son, Oliver, in a custody dispute with his father she does the unthinkable and kidnaps him. They flee rural North Carolina for Italy and with her family’s help disappear into her native homeland. Months pass with no sign of the mother and son. The boy’s guileful and mean-spirited father, Evan Meade, turns to a private investigator when the ineffective efforts of the federal authorities working alongside the local sheriff, Monroe Rossi, fail to track them down. But even as the search draws them closer to Anna, Evan’s true nature betrays itself and the question to what’s in the child’s best interest becomes not so clear anymore.At the center of the search for the missing boy is Sheriff Rossi, the embattled lawman, a divorced father himself whose black-and-white brand of upholding the law has lent much to his method of parenting. His frustration and obligation to both his community and his estranged family deepens the closer he comes to all of those involved, but at greater risk to his life’s work is the blurring of the line that occurs between law and justice. Stuck in the middle of this is Oliver, who battles his mother and others while trying to come to grips with this strange new world in which he has been thrust. Objectively detailed, deftly and gracefully written in a voice that refuses to intrude on the minds of its characters, A Lovely, Indecent Departure is a literary thriller capturing in stark detail an intoxicating world in which modern archetypes are turned upside down. To preview a sample of the book on Scribd.com please click here.About the author:I was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana but consider my childhood home the green, rolling foothills of East Tennessee and the southern Appalachia mountains, settlement to all sorts of interesting people, composites of which can be found throughout my writing. Most of my adulthood I've spent in the Sandhills and Piedmont of central North Carolina, where I live now with my wife and family. A Lovely, Indecent Departure is my first novel.Visit Steven:WEBSITE | TWITTERFACEBOOK | GOODREADS*******************

Dog Days(One print copy--U.S. Only) Winner--Laura (Book Snob)In Elsa Watson's Dog Days, struggling café owner Jessica Sheldon volunteered to be the chairperson of Woofinstock, Madrona’s annual dog festival, to overcome her reputation as “number one dog hater” in her dog crazy Northwestern town. Determined to prove her dog-loving credentials, Jessica rescues Zoe, a stray white German shepherd— and in the process the two are struck by lightning. Jessica wakes to discover paws where her feet should be, and watches in horror as her body staggers around the town square…. Zoe and Jessica have switched bodies. Learning to live as a dog is difficult enough, but Jessica’s real worry is saving her café from financial ruin. To complicate matters, she’s falling hard for Max, the town veterinarian. It’s clear that Zoe is thrilled to live life on “human terms,” thoroughly relishing all of the fun and food Woofinstock has to offer. But Zoe is also anxious to use her new human skills to find her missing family—who may not want her back. And Jessica needs to confront a complicated figure from her past before she can move on with her life. Jessica and Zoe will need to learn from each other to set things right, and possibly find acceptance and love in the bargain.About the author:Pacific Northwest native Elsa Watson has always loved animals. After raising chickens and inoculating goats in the Peace Corps in West Africa, she and her husband moved to an island near Seattle where they’ve filled their lives with dogs, more chickens, and the cat they brought home from their travels. She currently works at the West Sound Wildlife Shelter, a wildlife hospital and education center. Elsa is the author of MAID MARIAN(Crown, 2004; Three Rivers Press, 2005), a re-telling of the Robin Hood legend. Her novel DOG DAYS will be published by Tor-Forge in May 2012, followed by THE LOVE DOG in February 2013 and two e-novellas: A CHRISTMAS TAIL in October 2012 and THE PUPPY TRAP in January 2013. To learn more, visit www.elsawatson.net. (Goodreads)
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Rebel Puritan (A Scandalous Life)(One print copy--U.S.only)Winner--Stephanie HelgesonOur New England ancestors wore black hats with buckles and ate turkey with the Indians, but what else do we know about the Puritans? (hint: it wasn't Puritans who held the first Thanksgiving) Our nation battled even more fiercely over religious and political freedom then than it does today. Rebel Puritan explores those struggles, seen through the eyes of Herodias Long. This true-life girl married at thirteen to escape servitude, but when she learns that it is easier to marry a jealous man than to be freed from him, Herodias realizes that her troubles have just begun. Read reviews at Goodreads.

About the author:Jo Ann Butler has spent most of her life digging up New England's past as a colonial archaeologist, genealogist, and history junkie. She tapped this work for her first historical novel, Rebel Puritan.
Visit Jo Ann at WEBSITE or BLOG**********************

Unrest in Eden (One print copy--U.S. only)Winner--Melissa C.Father Ignaz Pfefferkorn, ex-S.J., released in January, 1778, and destitute after ten years of Spanish imprisonment, begs his way across France to his home in the Rhineland. He arrives in Unkel-on-the Rhine to find factional strife and ultimately murder in his hoped-for paradise. He is recruited to solve the crime, aided by unlikely helpers: a wealthy Cologne socialite and a head smuggler. He succeeds, only to find himself caught in the cross-fire of the French Revolutionary Army’s invasion of his homeland. (read reviews on Amazon)Donated by Stephanie Barko, Literary PublicistWEBSITE*****************

Angel Sleuth: A Mystery (One eBook copy--International)Winner--SrivalliKaitlin Singer needs time off—from a philandering husband, from a writing career stalled on a buzzard as a main character, and from the stash of chocolate in her lingerie drawer. Her decision to return to her childhood home might seem like the perfect way to get her life back together were it not for her mother foisting two visitors on her, guests who claim to be guardian angels. Perhaps not all is lost, for the angels might just be the companions she needs to help her solve the murder of a local newspaper columnist. To uncover clues to the crime, Kaitlin takes over the dead woman’s work, writing the column as well as volunteering in the senior center, moves that put her in the path of the killer. She and her guests will need assistance from a pot-bellied pig and some pool skills to bring the murderer down.

About the author:Lesley retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York. In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office. Back north, she devotes her afternoons to writing and, when the sun sets, relaxing on the bank of her trout stream, sipping tea or a local microbrew. She was winner of the 2009 Sleuthfest short story contest sponsored by Mystery Writers of America, Florida Chapter. She is author of A Deadly Draught released by Mainly Murder Press and Dumpster Dying (Oak Tree Press). Her short story Murder with All the Trimmings appeared in the UntreedReads anthology The Killer Wore Cranberry.

Donated by:

FROM ME: These are like new paperbacks--Never Let Me Go is trade paperback and The Host is a large, mass market paperback.

Never Let Me Go(One copy--U.S. Only) Winner = RandiFrom the acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, a moving new novel that subtly reimagines our world and time in a haunting story of friendship and love.As a child, Kathy–now thirty-one years old–lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed–even comforted–by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood–and about their lives now.A tale of deceptive simplicity, Never Let Me Go slowly reveals an extraordinary emotional depth and resonance–and takes its place among Kazuo Ishiguro’s finest work.*****************

The Host: A Novel(One copy--U.S. only)Winner = GinaMelanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of human hosts while leaving their bodies intact. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, didn't expect to find its former tenant refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.As Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of Jared, a human who still lives in hiding, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she's never met. Reluctant allies, Wanderer and Melanie set off to search for the man they both love.Featuring one of the most unusual love triangles in literature, THE HOST is a riveting and unforgettable novel about the persistence of love and the essence of what it means to be human. NOTE: I loved this book! It's one of my favorites.************************

Giveaway Details: This is a read-a-thon participant only giveaway. To be eligible, you must sign in at the starting line post when you start to read and complete a wrap-up post at the end and link it here at the official read-a-thon wrap-up (I will give everyone until Tuesday morning, 7/24, at 10am CST to complete their wrap-up posts). We have a total of 8 book prizes. This means there will be 8 winners. The first winner chosen will get first choice of all prizes listed and I will continue in this manner until all 8 winners are drawn. I do ask that anyone who wins a prize from me to please bear with me in sending the books out. My family has been in a financial pinch for many months so it might take me a bit to post them. I will greatly appreciate your patience. All other prizes are either eBooks which will be obtained via email or print copies will be shipped by the authors, publisher, or publicist. Winners will be chosen after the wrap-up post deadline (see above).

I would like to thank all the authors, Untreed Reads, and Stephanie Barko for their generous prize donations!

Friday, July 13, 2012

I've created a poll to determine how many Twitter chats we should have (if there's any interest at all) and some days to choose from. You can pick multiple answers. Please choose if you would rather have 2 or 3 chats next week and then pick 2 or 3 days/times that you prefer. Poll is at the top of the left sidebar and you can vote until noon Sunday (CST).

My Blogs

A community for reading challenges and read-alongs
Challenges:
13 Ways of Looking at The Lifetime Reading Plan
The Fantasy Project
The Michener Challenge
The Never-Ending Anne Rice Challenge
A Non-Fiction Adventure
The Stephen King Challenge